Employees Found Sleeping During Shift Time In Night Shift

From "hetal_hets" :
Hi,
We are facing problems in night shift that our Night shift employees found sleeping during office hours. It will affect our day to day operation.
Please give me some solution to resolve this..
Hetal19th June 2013 From India, Mumbai

What industry are you serving? Is it manufacturing/production related?

The staff who were found sleeping on duty, what kind of roles do they play?

Are only operational staff working in the night shift or we have a supervisor?

In the initial days when one of my family member had started a production unit and which needed to be operational in both the shifts, the owner used to go for a surprise visit any time in the shift to check what are the workers doing. However, this was in the intial period when the operations was just setting up. This is one way. Else you can monitor the working by putting up a CCTV camera that will video record the performance and hence also act as a proof of the non-performance if any.

Again just to remind you that it is little difficult to be awake and be fully productive in the night shift. Try to have some engaging activities like-

1. You can play some music or radio for say 30-45 minutes sometime in the mid-shift.

2. If you cannot celebrate individual birthdays, what you can do is for all the employees who have birthday in current 1 month or say in the two months, you can club and have small snack party arranged and get all the people involved to enjoy for some time.

3. Keep the interiors well lit as the darkness may imbibe the person to doze off.

4. Have 2 to 3 rounds of tea/coffee which will help them to be active.

You can in fact gather your staff and ask them what will make them more productive at work. Honestly, ask your staff, you never know you may get better ideas.

Be it the day shift or night shift, the only thing that will help in productivity is the engagement of employees. If your staff is engaged to your organization, is motivated to out perform, irrespective of the time, they'd perform; else night shift is just the excuse.

Hi Ankita,
Thank you so much for your quick reply.
We are into KPO & most of the staff are middle-level or Higher level & they work on live Website as serving customers query. We have done with surprise Visit, We have CCTV camera, We have tea/coffee wending machine itself in office pentry. We have allowed them to play music. But still we face these issue. We also celebrate birthday once in a month where we have small get to gether.In short, we have given them lots of leverage.
While talking to Night Manager they act more like executive rather than manager. It is very difficult for us to check CCTV camera all day.
Please help me to resolve this issue.
Hetal19th June 2013 From India, Mumbai

Dear Hetal,
What is the shift timing? Is it rotational shift to employee? Is it More than 8 hrs? Then,it may not solve easily. Have the floor manager listen the employee working status? Giving coffee or Tea may solve some sort of problem.First floor manager need monitor the calls if anything goes wrong in it.He needs to talk with concerned employee and ask them to avoid this in future with proper solution. Give them some soft skill training. Make the employee need to understand their responsibility. Give some gifts to the best performers. Spend more time with employees. Just monitor them in their coffee time or break time. We may get some good point to solve those problem. Arrange some weekend tours once in six month. Hike their salary and give promotion based on their performance. Fix some targets. Finally, Very urgent need is Train your Manager.19th June 2013 From India, Salai

I would again like to ask if all the employees or most of them are casually working or only a few of them.

If the matter is with all or most of employees, we need to conduct a meeting with all. Are they having any specific targets and incentives linked to the performance?

If only a few of them are casual, call the people individually and ask them the problem they are facing.

The challenge in working with human is none of us are perfectly same. What works for you may not work for me and vice versa. At the same time, we cannot go on customizing the facilities to the extent of all employees.

Yet call up a meeting with the whole staff and instead of pointing out the names of the people or saying that all of you are found sleeping, start off -

"I believe that working at night when most of our friends and relatives are fast asleep is very boring. So we are planning to do something that will motivate you and excite you to perform your jobs so that it does not become a routine task."

Prepare a short note that does not state that you all are non-performers but put emphasis on you wish to improve the experience they have.

Ask them what will make them more productive. What is it that will help them focus better on work.

Only in such meetings, we get to have some ideas and since these ideas are from the people who are to perform, I presume this will fit their requirement better than what we try to figure out.

What is your night shift time? You can plan a surprise family day.

Take any one day and make it officially the family day.

Invite one person from the family of the employees of night shift. Have a pick and drop for them. (Of course it will involve a cost but it will help in engaging the people.)

You can call the family member just 1 week prior to the pre-decided date and tell the person that you are planning to surprise the person and would like if any one of the family member would support you in this by coming to office premises on so and so date.

Arrange for a photographer and have a click of the staff with the family member and give the copy to the employee to stick on the cubicle walls or put on their work desk.

I believe having your family member on your office floor and seeing them there feeling proud of how hard you work will motivate them to work better ahead.

The photograph on the desk will keep on reminding them of this one day and how the family member are so proud of them.

2) Deploy team of managers who should take surprise night rounds - If anybody found sleeping note down his name- call him to office of his Head next day -counsel him.

3) Educate unions (if it is there) about this concern of yours.

4) Issue mass communications (Notice)- that

"It is observed that some employees sleep during duty hours and especially during night shifts. This is grave indiscipline which also amount to loss of productivity, unsafe act, and unsafe condition. Please also note that sleeping whilst on duty is a Misconduct as per section ( ) of Standing Orders applicable to you.

You are aware that management had carried out a drive to aware/educate employees about the seriousness of this indiscipline of sleeping whilst on duty.

Management has decided to view this act seriously and anybody found sleeping while on duty will be liable for disciplinary action and punishment as per provisions of standing orders.

We appeal each employee to act as a responsible employee and contribute towards improving effectiveness of our organization by instilling discipline.

We also appreciate the affirmative response from union in this regards and we are sure that there will be self imposed discipline in our company and we shall achieve improved organizational effectiveness.

it will be better if we will find out the solution why they are sleeping, we have to motivate about their duties.
we have to talk individual and short out problem,apart from manager we have to appoint team leader which is from same group,
make them to close to common goal.appreciation in each step.
provide them rotational shift.every three days,19th June 2013 From India

After all these valuable comments from our fellow members, just wanted to put down my views.

After installing the CCTV, Surprise Visit, Wending Machines, Music @ Station, Birthday Celebrations, etc, still you are facing issue about employees sleeping at duty. This should be because of utilization of an employee. How do you plan team size? Do you do any sort of analysis with the volume of business/work? This would also play a vital role in your query.

Nowhere in your query, you have mentioned about the targets, if any. If you are not getting any complaints/escalations from your customer, then this would be only because too many resources are deputed in the team, considering the volume of business. Please have a meeting with the Manager/Floor Supervisor, in regards to the utilization of employees. Again please do assess whether the Manager/Floor Supervisor is a healthy hire. If an employee designated to manage a team of people, is failing to do so, then that particular employee adds no value to the team/organization. Pink Slip ;)19th June 2013 From India, Bangalore

Since you have tried almost everything and received the best of suggestions form our experts, here's my question to you. Have you tried training your employees on their lifestyle?

Assuming that the employees in consideration have been working in the sector for last few years, they are supposed to find the sleep-balance . However, if this had not happened, are they under the life-cycle stage where they are almost living two-lives, utilising all their body strength during the day and falling asleep at night?

Please look deeper into the issues. If these employees have been productive and efficient at work other wise, certain degree of training by an health expert might help them improve upon their lives.

A firm where I worked we did see this pattern for a while, with a batch of employees. Right from the extra soda in the food at the cafeteria, we accounted all we could. When we observed it a little more, we found, since their cabs were registered early, they used to work out at the office gym, before the office hours. We discussed with an Health Expert and rescheduled the cabs for an extra hour towards the end of the day. This helped them work-out before they reached home, which is why they slept better and got up fresh for the office hours. Certain arrangements such as an hour break , mid way to the work day, for the ones who felt more active after working-out, did work wonders for us.19th June 2013 From India, Mumbai

Dear All,
Thank you so much for your valuable comments. We found out one reason that employee work in day shift too as they have their own side business & thats why they get few hours to sleep in the day time.Did any emoployees are allowed to work at same time while they are working with us?19th June 2013 From India, Mumbai

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